by Julia Watts
Liv exhaled, puffing out her cheeks. “It’s not a bad idea, Frederica. The trouble is, we don’t know how to control anything but the year. If we go back today, we’d arrive the day after the assassination.”
“Oh.”
Anthony said, “So, to state the obvious, we can’t afford to wait a whole year for the big day to come around again. The three of us won’t be in London.”
“I don’t have a plan, guys, but I’m pretty sure of two things,” said Liv. The others waited. She took a deep breath and began.
“First, we have to go back to the year before all this happens— seventeen seventy-one.
“Second, we’re in over our heads. I think you boys had better see about contacting your friend Morehouse. He seems like a good one to have on our side, and we need all the help we can get.”
“No, no-o-o,” Cal groaned, holding his head and lowering it between his knees. Anthony grimaced and frowned.
“Besides,” she continued,as if she hadn’t seen them,“he knows this crowd. Cumpston was the one who stalked Morehouse, at the king’s request. He was supposed to have killed him.”
“What?” Cal’s head shot upright, his hands still over his ears. “How do you know that, and why didn’t you tell us?” he demanded.
“I meant to—I really did. It just slipped my mind, with everything else that was going on.” She looked at the boys. They didn’t seem to be buying it.
“Okay,” she conceded, “that was partly true. At first, I just didn’t have the nerve to mention it. Later, I did actually forget about it.”
Cal blew out a sigh. Anthony threw his baseball glove on the grass and sat down beside it.
Frederica pointed to Liv. “Be mad at her if you like, but I think she’s right, as long as this Morehouse is trustworthy. He’s comfortable in the seventeen-seventies—we’re not. He knows the place and the people, he’s an adult, and don’t forget. . .” She leaned back on the bench and crossed her arms. “He already knows the secret of your time-travel box. You wouldn’t be letting anyone else in on it.”
Cal looked at Anthony. “Who’s going to meet with him?”
“The four of us,” Liv replied firmly. “We’re in this together.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“What do you mean, you can’t find it?” Liv tried not to shout, but she could hear her voice rise in pitch.
Anthony shook his head, and Cal looked nervously toward the bedroom of their apartment, where Anna and her parents were still sleeping. It was seven o’clock in the morning, and they wouldn’t be alone much longer.
Liv picked up Anthony’s wallet from an end table and began taking everything out, searching for Morehouse’s business card. “You don’t need your Adelaide Village library card over here, you know,” she said, sorting through the wallet’s contents and shaking her head. “Or Honor Society membership, or Spanish Club. But maybe it’s a good sign. You never throw anything away.”
She pointed to the coat closet. “Have you checked all your pockets?”
“No, and I can’t right now—I have to put all this stuff back in my wallet.”
Anthony picked up his belongings and began methodically restoring them to his version of order, his mouth set in a grim expression.
Liv rolled her eyes and Cal shuffled over from the sleeper sofa they had just reopened to search.
“I’ll dig through the pockets,” he said. “Go make nice to your brother. We won’t be very productive if you two are bickering all day.”
Liv turned and walked back to Anthony. “Sorry,” she said. “The card is pretty small, and you didn’t have a reason to think you needed to keep up with it. It’s nothing compared to what I let get away from me.” Her eyes filled with tears, and she picked up the rest of Anthony’s cards and held them out.
Anthony smiled and punched her gently on the shoulder. It was good to have a brother who pretended not to notice the tears.
“Ha!” Cal closed the closet door and ran back to them, holding the small white card and waving it.
He passed the card to Anthony and asked, “Who gets to make the call?”
“Not me,” said Liv. “I never met the man till we saw him at the airport.”
“Not me,” echoed Cal. “I’m not good under pressure.”
Liv turned to her Brother and smiled. “Anthony can handle this. What do you say, brother?” It might not make up for snapping at him, or for not telling them about old Cumpston’s connection to Morehouse, but Anthony seemed to appreciate the vote of confidence and nodded, tucking the card into his wallet.
“We can’t call from here,” he said. “It’s too early, and we couldn’t explain the phone charge to Mom and Dad. We could look for a pay phone, but it’d be better to get your new best friend Frederica to let us use her cell phone.”
Liv snorted. “How about ‘worst friend’? ‘Frenemy’?”
She stopped. “Though, you know, she’s gotten about fifteen percent less obnoxious lately. At the rate she’s going, she could be almost human in a few decades.”
Cal spoke up. “I think you need to lighten up on her a little. She seems kind of okay. Maybe she just needs someone to like her for who she is.”
“Yeah, an obnoxious, egotistical brat—”
Anthony finished her sentence. “—who outsmarted you. And now she’s trying to help us.”
He touched Liv’s arm. “So let her help.”
It was later in the day, at Liv’s official piano practice time, that she and the boys arrived at the Havards’ house. Liv’s backpack held her music, stacked on top of the box. Anthony and Cal had brought their gloves, and they tossed the baseball back and forth while Liv rang the doorbell. They were greeted, as usual, by Baxter, who took a particular interest in the gloves, whining and wagging his tail.
Upstairs, Mrs. Havard exclaimed, “Oh, Liv, you’ve brought an audience with you—how lovely!” Then, when she saw the baseball, “Sorry, boys, that definitely looks like an outside activity. You’d better head to the nearest park. That would be Kensington.”
“We’re on our way, Mrs. Havard,” said Anthony. “But we thought we’d see if Frederica wanted to come.” He reached into Liv’s backpack and pulled out his dad’s well-worn glove as Mrs. Havard’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Well, best of luck to you, but I think the chances of Rica’s wanting to play baseball are somewhere between improbable and impossible.”
A red streak sailed across the kitchen and soared through the transom above the door to the dining room. It was followed seconds later by a green one, squawking, “Pretty bird! Pretty bird!”
“What you might do,” she continued, not even looking up, “is talk her into taking a walk with those two. It seems we’ve acquired a foster macaw.”
Cal ignored Liv’s horror-struck expression. “I guess we could,” he volunteered, some doubt evident in his voice. “Do they have little collars with leashes?”
“Oh, they do indeed, though McGinty’s never tried to fly off on his own when we take him out. It’s Precious I don’t trust.”
She sighed. “It looks like we’ve gotten ourselves another pet. McGinty is absolutely smitten with her, and no one has answered our adverts.”
She leaned toward them and stage-whispered, “Just between us, I think that bird resided in a tavern. Her language is as colorful as her feathers.”
“Auraw-w-k! Pour me another one!” Precious screamed.
“You might want to keep away from children while you’ve got her out. Oh, here, I’m talking as if you’d already agreed to walk them.”
McGinty appeared in the transom space and perched, locking his eyes on Liv while his irises expanded and contracted.
“I’ll just run back and say hi to Frederica,” Liv said, moving as quickly as possible toward the bedrooms.
“And thanks again for calling Mrs. Davison, uh, Philomena, for us. We had a wonderful time.” Liv didn’t mention that the dresses had looked a little worse for the wear after their
adventure, and were now at the dry cleaner.
She walked down the hall and eyed the half-open door to Frederica’s room, remembering what she had seen the first time she’d entered it. She knocked, and Frederica called out from the bathroom, “In here.”
Liv looked all around the room. White furniture, pink rug, pink bedspread. A typical girl’s room, except. . .the bed pillows were positioned perfectly. Hair clips and barrettes lined up in precise order on the dresser, like soldiers at parade rest. Makeup and lotion bottles were arranged in rows and columns. They were grouped by color and size, in order of the spectrum: pinks—large, medium, and small; beiges—ditto; then blues; and finally, whites.
On a desk, next to a cell phone in its charger, were a dozen newly-sharpened pencils laid out side by side, each one sharpened down to exactly the same length. Liv suspected that if she peeked in drawers or the wardrobe, she’d find things arranged with the same rigor.
She looked again at the pencils and couldn’t resist. She shifted one slightly askew, just in time to avoid being caught by Frederica as she emerged from the bathroom.
Her pale blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail, topped by a pale blue baseball cap. Faded jeans and white flip-flops shot the paleness factor up a few more notches, in Liv’s opinion, and the white, long-sleeved T-shirt sent it over the top. She looked like a ghost.
“Nice hat,” managed Liv. “Grab your phone. Anthony’s going to call Morehouse when the three of you get to Kensington Park and see if he’ll meet with us.”
Frederica nodded and removed the phone from its charger, then paused, frowning at the pencils. She straightened the offender.
“I’m ready,” she said, scanning the room, as if other random objects might have jumped out of place while she wasn’t looking. “Now, what was that about when you get to Kensington Park. Didn’t you mean we?”
“Oh, no,” said Liv. “Your mother talked the boys into taking both of your insane birds for a little walk in the park. I feel a sudden urge to practice.”
“Not so fast.” Frederica caught up with her before she reached the doorway and placed an arm across it, blocking her path. “I distinctly remember hearing you say we were in this together. We all heard you.”
She lowered her arm and grabbed Liv by the elbow. “So stop your foot-dragging and let’s get on with it. If one didn’t know better, one might think the perfect Ms. Wescott had a parrot phobia.”
“It’s not a phobia. You may have a few—I just have a perfectly normal aversion to anyone who stares at me and makes his pupils grow and shrink really fast. What did he mean by that, anyway?”
Frederica asked, “Was he spreading out his tailfeathers?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“In that case,” Frederica said, “it was probably, ‘I should like to kill you.’ But he flashes his eyes all the time now to Precious, and it means, ‘Hello, Beautiful.’”
“Great,” grumbled Liv, pulling her backpack onto her shoulders. “Be sure you keep her in his line of sight all the time, because I can’t be responsible for what happens if he attacks me. I’d hate to resort to violence, but in his case I think I could make an exception.”
Downstairs, Mrs. Havard left the house for an orchestra rehearsal, and Frederica removed Baxter’s leash from a hook on the wall.
“Want to go with us?” she asked. Baxter replied by way of wagging the entire back half of his body, struggling to hold himself still enough to have the leash attached to his collar.
Then Frederica whistled, and the sound of flapping wings, punctuated by squawks, filled the room. McGinty and Precious settled in on Frederica’s shoulders, and she winced as they gripped with their toes. Baxter turned his head and cocked it, narrowing his eyes and giving a barely audible growl.
As the four humans and two avians made their way to the door, it seemed to occur to Baxter that the house was about to be bird-free for awhile, and he turned and ran back down the hall, straining to get traction on the wood floor and trailing his leash behind him.
“I’ll just run and fetch him,” offered Liv.
“Leave him,” Frederica ordered. “I don’t trust you to come back.”
“That’s insulting!” Liv turned to her brother. “Do I have to let her talk to me like that?”
Anthony shrugged. “You two want to butt heads or get something done?”
Liv sighed and fell into step with Cal, behind Anthony and Frederica. With a one-hundred-eighty degree turn of his head, McGinty gave Liv a full-on stare, then slowly blinked one eye.
He wasn’t just a menace. He was a smart-aleck.
Chapter Thirty
“Wish me luck,” Anthony murmured, looking at the phone number on Morehouse’s business card and punching buttons.
Liv, Cal and Frederica watched in silence. McGinty and Precious groomed each other behind Frederica’s head.
Two loud rings sounded, and Anthony said, “It’s ringing, ringing. I bet it’s going to go to voice mail.”
Then there was a click, and a familiar voice carried loud and clear through the phone. “Morehouse here.”
“Oh, man,” mouthed Anthony in a low whisper.
“Who’s that?”
Anthony cleared his throat. “Mr. Morehouse, this is Anthony. My friend and I ran into you in Gatwick Airport, remember? You gave us your business card?”
They all listened to Morehouse’s booming reply. “Why, of course, lad! It’s good to hear you again. I wanted to pass on a word of caution to you and Cal, but I hadn’t got round to it, so your call is most timely.”
“How do you know our names? We never told you our names.”
Liv clasped and unclasped her hands, rethinking the wisdom of contacting the former pirate.
“Don’t let that worry you,” he said. “Or the fact that I know where you’re staying. It’s someone else I wanted to talk to you about, but wait—you called me. You first.”
Anthony explained their situation, leaving out nothing, except for the identity of Cumpston. Liv supposed Anthony didn’t want to overload Morehouse and scare him off. There was no response for several seconds, and she thought the phone might have gone dead.
Anthony wound up his speech with a plea. “We need you to go back with us and do something to stop the bad guy from killing this man—or anyone else.”
The phone wasn’t dead. It vibrated in Anthony’s hand as Morehouse’s voice roared through it. “You want me to do what?”
Anthony held the phone at arm’s length as Morehouse continued his rant. “Have you collectively gone mad, or do you simply not remember that I left London in the seventeen-seventies for a very good reason?”
Liv became aware that Precious was jumping up and down on Frederica’s shoulder, straining at her little bird leash and leaning toward the phone.
“Look,” whispered Liv. “She’s doing the eye-flash thing at the phone.”
Frederica answered, “She probably just likes the color, and it’s shiny.”
Precious broke free and flew to Anthony’s shoulder, fluttering her wings and pecking at the phone. “Are you a pirate? Are you a pirate?” she squealed.
“I know that voice!” Morehouse’s own sounded disbelieving. “It’s not human—it’s. . .No, it couldn’t be.” He cleared his throat. “Back to the matter at hand, Anthony. I’ll meet with you, and we’ll talk. I can do it in an hour, but not at your place. My associate knows where you’re staying, and these days I never know what might set him off.
“There’s a lovely little eel pie and mash shop, just a short journey for you. It’s called The Jellied Eel.” Cal groaned and held his stomach.
Morehouse continued, “Take the tube toward Notting Hill, and the shop’s in Portobello Road. Hop off at the Ladbroke Grove stop, and it’s a two-minute walk for you. Got that?”
“Got it,” said Anthony, and hung up. He pulled Precious from his arm and handed her to Frederica. “Let’s get these two back to your place.”
The four walked back,
and Precious sang snatches of tunes with words like “ale” and “buccaneer.” McGinty hunkered down and leaned on Frederica’s cheek, looking depressed.
“Don’t worry, buddy,” Anthony told him. “She isn’t Morehouse’s type.”
Chapter Thirty-One
In spite of its name, The Jellied Eel was attractive and clean. Live eels swam in tanks at the shop’s front window, and a long marble countertop ran almost the length of the place. Black and white wall tiles and an abundance of mirrors complemented the Victorian wrought-iron chairs and tables, but did nothing to ensure privacy.
Liv looked left and right on the street before leading the others inside. Morehouse was waiting for them. They were close to Portobello Road Market, where Cumpston and his partners had their place of business, but surely the chances of running into him were small. Besides, Morehouse knew how to take care of himself, and he had suggested the place.
She brushed her fears aside, followed Morehouse up to the cash register, and listened as he ordered eels and mash for everyone. The others trailed along, and minutes later they were padding over the clean sawdust floor to help themselves to forks and spoons.
Cal rummaged through the silverware box. “I need a knife.”
“You won’t find one, mate,” advised Morehouse. “A proper pie house has no knives. Proximity to pubs and all that.”
“Why is the furniture bolted to the floor?” asked Liv.
“Same reason.” He carried his loaded plate to a marble-topped table in a deserted corner of the shop. He selected a hard-backed wooden seat and motioned to the others to do the same.
The boys set their plates on either side of him and the girls sat at the next table, swiveling their chairs to face the others.
Anthony immediately began consuming his feast while Cal and the girls stared at the mounds on their plates.
“Come on, tuck in,” ordered Morehouse. “You’re looking at a time-honored delicacy. Londoners have been eating eels for thousands of years.” He picked up a large bottle of malt vinegar and sprinkled it liberally over his plate.
